


wrap up my bones and leave them

by andnowforyaya



Category: B.A.P, K-pop
Genre: Altered State of Consciousness, Gen, Injury Recovery, M/M, Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-31
Updated: 2014-08-31
Packaged: 2018-02-15 13:18:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2230506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andnowforyaya/pseuds/andnowforyaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Himchan wakes up in a strange land and in an unfamiliar bed, and he meets a boy named Daehyun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wrap up my bones and leave them

**Author's Note:**

> for [goldenkimono](http://golden-kimono.livejournal.com/) in [thebrowniebunch exchange, round three.](http://thebrowniebunch.livejournal.com/)

The first thing Himchan’s consciousness clings to is the oppressive heat -- the film of sweat he feels over his skin and the cracked dryness of his lips -- and then it is the gentle sway of his body, like he is being carried. He opens his eyes and the glare is too bright for him to make anything out, just a silhouette against a white background.

“Himchan?” someone says from far away. The low voice echoes, caresses his name, and his brain throws back reverberations. “Himchan?”

He closes his eyes. Himchan fades away and stays in the dark for a very long time.

.

He wakes briefly, once, to water being pressed in a cool glass against his lips, and he drinks until he splutters, and someone laughs.

.

“Finally!”

Himchan blearily connects the voice to the same person he had heard laughing, earlier. Whoever is speaking has a bright, smooth tenor that rises and dips like waves crashing against a shore. The accent makes it difficult for Himchan to understand the barrage of sentences thrown his way as he orients himself, blinking slowly to adjust to the dimness of the room and curling his fingers experimentally into the soft sheets underneath him.

The room is large, and almost without walls on two sides. Long, open windows with their shutters folded back allow a dry breeze to rustle through the various curtains and cloths draped and pinned up around him in washed-out, dust-beaten colors. Everything is hot in the way things can be when you are trapped unmoving for a long, long time. The air smells spicy and foreign, but not unpleasant.

“...I’ve been by so many times, but you’ve just been sleeping away. I was afraid you’d died! Ha! Oh, but there’s so much we can do…”

The boy prattles on, seemingly oblivious while Himchan catalogues his aches and pains. He doesn’t remember how he got here, or indeed where ‘here’ even is. His right leg feels stiff and his arm is curled against his chest in a way that makes him think it’s bandaged and secured there, but otherwise he feels relatively unscathed. His head aches, but he thinks this is more due to the nonstop chatter assaulting him than anything else.

“Who…?” he manages, throat scratchy. He coughs, and it feels like needles are lodged there.

“...lucky to have come this way, you know?” the boy is saying in that accent of his. It’s a strange one. Himchan’s never heard anything quite like it before falling so naturally from anyone’s lips, though it is familiar. “So few make it so far. I wonder how it is you came to this place?”

There’s a hand behind his head gently easing him up, and then a glass pressed against his lips. Himchan blinks again and sips, and sees the boy for the first time.

He is slight and slender, his face round and young, with large features -- plush lips and big eyes. His skin has been darkened by the sun and reminds Himchan of the beaches he’d visited in his distant past, gold and glittering.

He’s decorated in unfamiliar garb and strange jewelry, with black and gold lined around his eyes and a single gold stripe running down the center of his bottom lip, and in his ears are hoops and studs. Though Himchan tries not to stare, he thinks he sees the outline of another metal ring at the boy’s nipple through his thin, spare top.

Himchan feels bland in comparison, pale and meek.

On second thought, _everything_ feels bland in comparison. The room is bare save for the sparse furniture, the only movement the rustling of the cloths when a breeze comes through. There seems to be nothing else for Himchan to look at; the boy’s every movement catches what little light there is in the room, and he glitters.

“I said,” the stranger continues, putting emphasis on the last word, already exasperated with Himchan’s slow acclimatization with the world. He tilts the glass up for Himchan to drink more, and Himchan swallows obediently. “How are you feeling? Or has the journey really gotten to you? Sometimes people don’t make it this far out, or they skip over us altogether.”

“Journey?” Himchan says, water dribbling from his lips and down his chin. The boy laughs, and Himchan gives up on not staring while the stranger dabs at his face and chest with a cloth from a stand by the bed and then puts both the cloth and the glass away. He’s sitting cross-legged on top of the sheets.

“Yes,” he says simply, impish, his eyes forming crescents when he smiles.

“Where am I? What is this place? Who are you?” Himchan frowns. There’s a feeling of familiarity and finality in these bare walls. Like coming home.

He stares at the boy. The boy stares back. His eyes seem to draw him in with their darkness, but he is not afraid.

“You’re in the Desert,” he says. “And I’m Daehyun. Welcome to my home.”

.

He thinks it’s the heat that gets to him. Whatever it is, Himchan is drawn back into sleep after trying to understand the quick blabbering of questions coming out of Daehyun’s mouth -- questions that he can’t seem to answer, his mind a thick fog that he cares little about clearing at the moment.

“Not to worry,” Daehyun assures him as Himchan’s drifting off again. “It’s normal not to remember.”

He catches a tiny smile at the corners of Daehyun’s lips.

When he awakens, the image of that smile sits heavy in his mind, twisting into something sad and distant.

His bandages have been removed, and his leg is less stiff than it was a few hours ago. Himchan sits up, a wince ready between his teeth, surprised to find that nothing hurts quite like he thought it would. He’s been dressed in clothes similar to what he’d seen Daehyun wearing -- a thin singlet and loose drawstring pants -- with a flash of metal at his wrist.

There’s another glass of water on the small table by the bed, and he takes it and drinks. Then, he swings his legs around and tries standing.

He has to catch himself on the edge of the table to balance when a wave of dizziness washes over him, but once that’s done, he finds himself steady. What had Daehyun said before? That he was in the desert? He’d said it as though Himchan would know _which_ desert he was referring to.

It doesn’t seem strange to him, however, to be in this place. Or, rather; the strangeness is there, but far away and unconcerning, like a storm brewing in the distance. He has more important matters at hand, such as: he feels like he hasn’t eaten in days.

He uses the wall at first for support but soon finds he doesn’t need it. His legs have strength, and his curiosity carries him out of his room and into a hallway. The ceilings are tall enough that when Himchan looks up everything seems matted and grey, and in either direction, the hallway goes on forever.

He chooses a side at random and walks down it, wondering what paintings or sculptures lie behind the white, cloth-covered shapes lining the walls. He imagines elaborate tapestries and grand statues. Paintings of a royal family whose line has long died out. The longer he walks the more he realizes this place is like an empty castle, or a tomb, grand and echoing.

Every few steps he comes across a window, but what lies outside does not interest him. There’s a scent drifting from the direction he picked -- some sort of grilled meat perfuming the air, and it makes his mouth water and his stomach grumble.

He follows his nose and it brings him into the doorway of what looks like an informal dining hall, fashioned much like the room in which he awoke except, instead of a bed, it is furnished by a low, long table in the center in a nest of thick blankets and pillows, a veritable feast laid upon the table’s surface.

Daehyun lounges on the opposite side, eyes lined heavily and reminding Himchan of a cat. There is no make-up on his lips, this time, though they do seem a particularly appealing shade of pink. There is a servant dressed in all white kneeling by him, hands folded on their lap, face mostly hidden by a thin mask.

Himchan licks his lips. There, he sees the grilled meat he’d smelled. The table is decorated in small dishes, all filled with a sampling of delicious-looking food, in all sorts of colors. Daehyun’s eyes seem to flash like lightning when he looks up into them.

“Well,” Daehyun says, smirking. “Aren’t you going to eat?”

.

He eats his fill. The food never seems to lessen, or perhaps Himchan is so enamored of Daehyun’s conversation that he doesn’t notice when the servants dressed in white bring out more dishes. All of it is exquisite -- perfectly balanced and textured, smooth down his throat, helped along by the wine Daehyun pours for him.

Daehyun tells him stories. Fairy tales and myths. Stories about brave souls and happy endings. Himchan listens like he is hearing all of them for the first time.

.

After the meal, he and Daehyun stroll the corridors. Servants and other people seem always to be turning the corner and disappearing moments after they come across them. Their own footsteps are only ornamented by the sounds of Daehyun’s many metal anklets clinking with every lazy step.

“Are you a prince?” Himchan asks, when in the next hall they walk down, he sees a flutter of white at the end of it -- another servant turning the corner to stay out of sight. “Or a young lord?”

“Prince,” Daehyun hums, enigmatic and playful. “That certainly has a nice ring to it.”

“Is the castle yours?” Himchan presses, feeling the corners of his lips turn down at the evasive answer.

“It is,” Daehyun says simply, and now they’ve stopped in front of a familiar room.

Himchan steps inside. It is the room in which he woke, just yesterday.

“How did I get here?” Himchan asks, finally. All through their meal this thought did not come across Himchan’s mind once, but now that he is fed, now that he is reminded that he must have come from _somewhere_ , it surfaces.

“You were wandering,” Daehyun says with a little shrug that makes the bracelets around his wrists jingle. “Out there.” He nods past the doorway and past the long windows, out into the infinite stretch of sand Himchan can see in the distance. “You were lost.”

“And how did I get lost?” Himchan asks, growing tired of Daehyun’s answers that are not answers.

Daehyun shakes his head, and takes a step back, his anklets jingling lightly. “That, I don’t know.” He grins, his eyes forming crescents again.

Himchan thinks about how eyes are the windows into someone’s inner thoughts, and when Daehyun smiles, his eyes are hidden.

“Sleep well, Himchan,” Daehyun says, and his voice echoes.

.

Himchan is not sure how it is he comes to be sleeping, but then he is waking up. He feels strangely like no time has passed, or that many years have. Time seems murky here in the Desert, he thinks. Everything is hot and fuzzy and unfocused.

There is breakfast waiting for him -- an ornate tray containing a bowl of fresh fruit, a small jar of honey, and a pot of milk -- when he wakes.

The day passes quickly. Daehyun introduces him to two other boys named Youngjae and Junhong who are staying in another part of the castle, and they all stroll the gardens together, staying to the rocky path and ducking under the shade of tailored trees when the sun beams too hot. Youngjae smiles easily, and teases Daehyun for worrying so much when the others stray from the path.

“It’s just a path,” Youngjae says, humming a song Himchan almost recognizes under his breath. “A couple of stones. You don’t have to follow it.”

Daehyun hops the stones, careful, and Himchan feels himself drawn to the boys’ playful banter and ringing laughter.

He thinks, occasionally, that he should try to remember what it was he was doing before he came to this place, but then Daehyun laughs again, and his thoughts are derailed. Daehyun is beautiful.

The gardens don’t actually contain much foliage, but there are rock formations and pretty designs in the sand, and reflection pools if you step off the path. Himchan goes to one, and almost looks into its dark waters.

“Himchan!” Daehyun calls, a few paces away.

Himchan turns to see him laid out on top of the flat surface of a large rock, concentric rings in the sand surrounding it. He raises an eyebrow at him.

“You’ll fall in,” Daehyun says, beckoning with a hand.

Himchan rolls his eyes at that, smirking when Junhong does the same. They join Daehyun on the flat rock, and the sun beats down on them.

.

“Wake up, Himchan.”

A low, gravelly voice smooths over him in his sleep. Himchan squeezes his eyes shut tighter, on the edge of consciousness. The voice reminds him of someone he cannot place.

“I don’t want to," he mumbles, turning over and wishing for this disturbance to go away.

Long fingers stroke through his hair, and Himchan bolts up into sitting, suddenly very awake, heart beating quickly in his chest. His eyes adjust to the dim light and he sees a man.

He wonders what sort of image they make -- Himchan frozen against the headboard and this stranger whose face tugs at some buried corner of his mind hunched over his form, hand outstretched. The stranger smiles, and the small action renders him harmless and calms the rapid beating of Himchan's heart.

Where Daehyun is sunkissed and decorated, this man is dressed in white clothes like one of Daehyun’s servants, plain but precise, understated but also beautiful.

"There you are," the stranger says in his low timbre. Himchan's heart seems to pick up again, but then he forces himself to breathe.

"Who are you?"

"Yongguk," he says. "Come. There's something I want to show you."

“Are you a servant?” Himchan asks, but despite his trepidation he is already reaching forward to take Yongguk’s hand. It fits into his own like his fingers know the shape of him.

Yongguk shakes his head and says nothing. “Come on,” he says again.

Yongguk pulls him out of bed and out of his room. He seems to know his way around the castle well, and Himchan thinks he _must_ be a servant because of this. He winds them both through the hallways until they are outside, at the gardens where Himchan spent his afternoon.

Himchan asks again who he is, and then where they are going, but he has already become familiar with Yongguk’s silence, and doesn’t expect an answer.

“I came here already,” Himchan says, frowning a little at the lack of surprise, at being shown the garden. He’d been expecting to be led into a secret corridor or room, to a case of jewels perhaps, or maybe to a tapestry with Daehyun’s family’s lineage embroidered into its silken threads.

“There’s something I want to show you,” Yongguk says, his voice sending shivers into Himchan’s limbs. Yongguk speaks like he is talking to the very soul of you, slow and deliberate and meaningful.

“Okay,” Himchan says. He is drawn to him like a flower to the sun.

They take the stone path around waves in the sand, skeleton trees and rock structures that are all a dull grey in the evening light, like the color has been sucked out of everything. Yongguk pauses at a bend, and then he steps off the path.

“We shouldn’t,” Himchan says, remembering Daehyun’s warning earlier, halting at the edge of the stones, uncertain.

“Come,” Yongguk says, beckoning.

From here, the pool looks like a layer of glass, black and fathomless, still like death. It is the same one that Himchan had ventured toward before, during the day, but did not look into.

Now, Yongguk is standing at its edge. He kneels down into the sand and peers over it, and Himchan steps off the path and follows him.

He looks in.

He sees nothing at first. Only his reflection staring back at him. His narrow face and sharp features, and Yongguk’s image.

In the reflection, Yongguk smiles, his lips stretching across his face. In the reflection, Yongguk leans over and captures Himchan’s lips in a kiss when he looks and starts in surprise.

Himchan reels back, disturbing the sand beneath him when he pushes himself up to stand. “What was that?” he heaves, breathless. His lips tingle like Yongguk had really kissed him. Above them both, lightning flashes across the sky, but no thunder follows.

“What did you see?” Yongguk’s eyes are dark. Lightning flashes again, and Himchan sees all the bones and angles in his face.

“I need to get back,” Himchan says, stepping away, swallowing because his mouth has turned dry. “I need to go back to sleep.”

A few steps turns into a run. Yongguk does not follow him.

He bangs into his room just as, outside, it starts to pour.

.

In the morning, he thinks about the strange dream he had, its specifics already fading in his mind. The heat bears down on him, but he thinks it is beginning to break. There is the promise of cooler weather in the saturated, electric air. Rain has fallen and made everything darker.

Breakfast is on the the small side table again, and Himchan eats his fill of it, trying to remember what had happened in his dreams. It feels important for him to remember, but all he can recall is the lightning across the sky, skeleton trees and black waters.

Daehyun knocks on the door, then, and enters when Himchan grunts that he is awake.

His eyes remind Himchan of the waters he had peered into in his dream, lined dark and smokey. Today, Daehyun is wearing gold bracelets up the length of his arms nearly to his elbows, loose pants, and little else. His steps ring when his anklets knock against each other.

“Let’s play,” he says to Himchan with a glimmer in his eyes. He strides over to one of the open windows. Himchan had neglected to close the shutters the night before, and now Daehyun is standing in a pool of rainwater. He doesn’t seem to mind, peering out into the Desert through the opening.

Thunder rolls through the clouds gathered in the sky.

“Right now? Outside?” Himchan, from his spot on the bed still, looks where Daehyun is looking. He doesn’t want to go outside. The thought makes him shiver, even in the heat.

“There’s something I want to show you,” Daehyun says.

Himchan gasps at the suddenly tug of familiarity in his mind at the words, but by now his dream seems farther away than ever.

“Come on,” Daehyun continues, looking over his shoulder at Himchan, eyes glittering. “Get out of bed, Himchan.”

.

The Maze is a confusing path of stone walls and random breaks, spots of green within the grey and tawny sand. Himchan isn’t sure how he’d missed it, before, even just casually glancing out of any window of the castle. It’s huge.

Daehyun, Youngjae, and Junhong are in here somewhere. Himchan had counted to one hundred, as promised, before ducking into the Maze as well, choosing a direction and following it, tasked with the hunt. He thinks he gets turned around more than once, and by the time he finds a break in the Maze where he can sit and rest, the sun is high up in the sky, piercing through the covering of clouds.

There is a small pool surrounded by carefully laid rocks and a tree under which to sit in this part of the Maze, and Himchan leans his back against the trunk gratefully. He wonders if the others are still playing the game. It can’t have been that long, but it feels like forever.

He only closes his eyes for a moment. The heat buzzes in his ears and behind his eyelids.

A splash in the water.

Himchan opens his eyes and sees -- the name is fresh on his tongue -- “Yongguk,” he whispers, and the man squatting by the pool turns to him and grins.

So he wasn’t a dream, after all.

“Himchan,” Yongguk says. In the daylight Himchan can make him out more clearly, the angles of his face and dip of his collarbones at the neckline of the shirt he is wearing. Yongguk’s hand comes up so that he can lean his chin into his own palm. His fingers are long and thin, well-cared for. Himchan pictures them flowing over the keys of a piano, gripping a pen and scribbling words onto a page. Yongguk has a callus on the first knuckle of his middle finger on his right hand from writing.

He blinks, realizing his thoughts are running rampant -- he must be day-dreaming -- and tries to focus again. “How long was I asleep?”

“Too long,” Yongguk answers, pointing up at the sky. The sun is beginning to set.

Himchan licks his dry lips, on the verge of cracking. “Where are the others?”

Yongguk shrugs. “Still playing. Or back in the castle. Or perhaps they are lost.”

“Lost?” Himchan repeats, feeling his chest tighten at the word. Daehyun had told him he’d been lost, before.

Yongguk dips his fingers into the pool and swirls the water around his hand. “It’s a big Maze,” he says. “Maybe they found a way out.”

“I should get back to them. They’re probably looking for me.” He stands in order to kneel down next to Yongguk, and then he cups his hands in the water and sips from his own palms. The water sluices down his throat and quenches his thirst almost immediately.

“Do you know the way back?” Yongguk asks him, calm.

Himchan looks at the place where he had entered the opening, thinking on all the twists and turns he had taken to get here. Trying to keep his rising realization that he is lost -- that he could wander here for days -- at bay, he shakes his head. “Do you?”

Yongguk’s smile spreads across his face like the sun clearing a storm.

.

Following Yongguk is no hardship. Himchan feels compelled to trust him, and shadows his steps from the clearing back into the walls of the maze. There’s a trick to mazes, Himchan remembers now -- something about keeping your left hand on the wall -- but though Yongguk does keep his hand hovering over the stones he does not seem to need their guidance. He walks and the Maze forms for him.

He remembers a park. He remembers a day out in the sun. The breeze was cool and refreshing and smelled faintly of salt. Perhaps he was by the sea. “Do you know the way back?” someone in his memories asks him. He sounds like Yongguk. Himchan doesn’t care to answer his question. He tells him. He wants to stay here forever.

“We can’t stay here forever, Himchan.” A low, melodic laugh. “But I know what you mean.”

Fingers in his hair draw him out of the memory. They’ve stopped. He can see the entrance to the Maze and the blurry outline of the castle rising up above it in the heat. There’s a spot behind his ear that is particularly sensitive. Yongguk’s fingers brush over that spot, and Himchan turns to him. He leans forward.

He thinks about why he is here, what the castle means, what Yongguk means. Feels the answer at his fingertips. He closes his eyes.

“Himchan!”

Daehyun’s voice breaks through the buzz in his ears that has stayed with him since they were separated. He opens his eyes and finds he is alone. Startled, Himchan turns to look back into the Maze, but it is empty. Did Yongguk turn a corner? Is he hiding?

“Daehyun, was someone else just here?”

Daehyun is out of breath. It is strange to see him panting, running. Himchan has only known him for a few days, but he never seems to be hurried about anything. Now, he is dashing up to Himchan, anklets ringing, and then he is wrapping his arms tight around Himchan’s middle.

“I looked for you,” Daehyun mutters into his chest. “I looked for you and I couldn’t find you. I thought you’d gone already. I thought you’d left.”

“Daehyun,” Himchan tries again. His arms wrap around Daehyun at his waist. His frame is smaller than Himchan had anticipated, and he holds him tighter than he’d intended. “Did you see anyone else on your way here?”

The prince stiffens, draws himself straight and back and Himchan is surprised by the sheen of tears in his eyes. “Ah,” he says. “No.”

“But he was just here,” Himchan insists. “Yongguk was just here. He helped me find my way out.” He looks back into the Maze. Daehyun’s fingers are gentle when he guides his gaze back to him, eyes dark and reflective.

“Who’s Yongguk?” Daehyun asks.

The buzz returns and ratchets up into something that makes his heart beat too hard in his chest and his blood run too quickly in his veins. Yongguk was here. He knows it. He looks back into the Maze. “Yongguk,” Himchan says, feeling panic clawing at the edges of his being. He doesn’t know why this is so important to him. “Yongguk was here. He helped me get out of the Maze. You must know him.”

“You had a long day,” Daehyun says, careful, like speaking through spiderwebs. “You had a long day and you need to rest. I don’t know a Yongguk, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t here. I believe you.”

This calms him, little by little. He allows Daehyun to draw him back down into the heat of the Desert, into his eyes. Daehyun takes his hand and they walk the path to the castle, and then Himchan remembers something else.

“Where are Youngjae and Junhong?”

The prince falters in his steps and Himchan has to right him suddenly as he trips over a loose stone. His hand tightens around Himchan’s. He doesn’t look back when he says:

“It was time for them to leave. They’re gone.”

.

Daehyun stays with him for the rest of the afternoon. He tells Himchan more stories, more legends. He doesn’t seem to glitter or catch the light as he did before, smiling less. He probably misses the other boys. Himchan thinks it must be very lonely living in this big empty castle in the middle of the Desert.

A nap as the sun begins to set turns into sleep.

It seems natural for Daehyun to stay then, too, for him to take up space beside Himchan on the bed. Daehyun curls to fit within the circle of Himchan’s arms, and he is warm, his skin smooth and unblemished.

Himchan holds him and isn’t sure if he dreams.

.

“Wake up, Himchan.”

Himchan groans at the voice, turns over in his sleep, away from the warmth of the body next to him. “I don’t want to.”

A low laugh that makes heat blossom in his gut. Yongguk brushes his fingers through Himchan’s hair, and Himchan keeps his eyes closed. He is afraid that if he opens them, Yongguk will not be there.

“Please,” Yongguk pleads, a teasing note to his voice. “Please, Himchan. I want to go to the gardens again.”

“Then go by yourself,” Himchan whispers, trying not to wake Daehyun, who grumbles in his sleep.

Yongguk tugs on his hands, both of them, playful, and Himchan wants to laugh. He remembers falling out of bed like this, before, crashing into limbs and stifling laughter over the boy underneath him. The memory leaves him just as suddenly as it appeared. Yongguk drags him out of bed and Daehyun’s arm slips from his waist.

“Please,” Yongguk says again, propping Himchan up to stand. His face is very close. Himchan’s cheeks flame.

“Fine,” he says, turning away to check on the prince, who is resting peacefully, knees drawn up to his chest on his side. Himchan wonders why he makes himself small like that. Yongguk tugs on his hand. “But, _shh_ , I don’t want to wake him.”

“Of course,” Yongguk agrees.

They go to the gardens again. Past the tree that looks like skeletons in the moonlight. Past the stone formations and rings in the sand. Yongguk hums a song that Himchan almost recognizes. He thinks it’s the song that Youngjae had been humming, too. Himchan knows where Yongguk is taking him.

To the reflection pool.

The last time they came here was in Himchan’s dream. Or what he thinks was a dream. He can’t remember. They’d looked in and Himchan had been surprised by what he’d seen.

He’s apprehensive, now, as Yongguk approaches the edge. He steps forward like he is going to walk right into the water, but stops short of doing so, sitting on the rocks instead.

“Why do you like coming here in the middle of the night?” Himchan asks him.

Yongguk shrugs. “It’s very calm here. It feels like we’re on the precipice of something, doesn’t it? But there is no danger behind or in front of us. Just a choice.”

“What are you talking about?” Himchan furrows his eyebrows at Yongguk’s strange words.

“Come sit with me.”

Himchan sits, cross-legged at the edge, pouting. Yongguk confuses him. He always confuses him. Silence blankets them. Himchan realizes the absence of white noise -- insects chirping in the night, wind rustling sand, the world turning -- in a sudden terrifying moment.

Everything is still. Too still.

Stagnant.

“What is this place?” Himchan whispers.

“What do you see in the reflection pool?”

“I don’t know,” Himchan grits.

“You’re not even looking.”

“I don’t want to look.”

“Himchan,” Yongguk says sadly. “Please.”

He looks.

He sees himself as he is now -- wild black hair fanning around his face, sharp cheekbones and pale skin. He sees Yongguk, smiling up at him. His mouth opens and forms words but Himchan cannot hear them. He knows what he is saying, though, and he feels pinpricks in the backs of his eyes, tears forming.

The drops fall into the reflection pool and break up the images, sending ripples out over the water. He sees Yongguk lean over to kiss him, and feels the ghost-touch of it on his cheek like it had really happened. _I love you_ , the reflection mouths. They kiss again, this time on the lips.

“ _How?_ ” Himchan asks aloud, voice breaking. He knows Yongguk, but how? From where? Why is he so familiar? He turns to Yongguk beside him, but he is gone. Angry, Himchan dashes his fist against the surface of the water, shattering the images completely.

He doesn’t want to think about how he knows Yongguk, afraid of the answers that lie at the bottom of the reflection pool. Maybe Yongguk is there, also, waiting for him, but it is dangerous. Himchan doesn’t know how deep the pool is, and it is much safer in the castle.

Safer, maybe, with Daehyun.

He stumbles back, blinking through the mess of tears on his face. It’s too much. _On the precipice of something_ , Yongguk said, but Himchan doesn’t want to fall.

Daehyun is awake when he returns, when he slides back into bed.

He looks worried.

Himchan kisses him.

He makes a needy desperate noise in his throat, and Daehyun mimics it, and Himchan knows he will not stop kissing him tonight. They are frantic. Daehyun’s body is hot like the sun and arches up to meet him. Himchan rolls Daehyun’s piercings between his teeth, over his tongue, relishes the sounds Daehyun makes for him. Daehyun’s body opens up like a flower, and Himchan sucks and bites and pushes, and the prince tastes like milk and honey.

When they are both sated, Himchan holds him close to his chest, ignoring how sticky they both are, wondering if he’s strong enough to crush Daehyun against him.

Daehyun reaches up to kiss him, soft hand cupping Himchan’s cheek. He pulls back and his smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. Himchan wants to cry. “You saw Yongguk again,” Daehyun says.

“I did,” Himchan says, struggling to control his breaths.

“It’s okay,” Daehyun continues. “You don’t have to be frightened, but you can’t stay here forever. Yongguk is here to help.”

Lightning flashes across the sky and thunder roils. Pain lances through Himchan’s chest and he hisses, and Daehyun kisses him again, his eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks.

“I want to stay,” Himchan murmurs.

“I wish you could, but it will mean the end of you -- here and outside of here,” Daehyun says. “And I won’t allow that.”

Himchan gasps. He thinks about this place, his memories, the loss of the meaning of time. He thinks about Yongguk. He realizes aloud:

“I don’t know where I am right now, but somewhere else, outside of the Desert, I am dying.”

“Not dying,” Daehyun tells him, his fingers a comforting pressure in Himchan’s hair as he coddles him. “Your body is in-between. You were wandering when I found you. A lost soul. I kept you. Put you back together. But now it is almost time for you to go.”

Himchan’s voice shakes when he speaks. “Where will I go? What will happen to me? What will happen to you?”

Daehyun smiles again. His eyes gleam, ageless.

“I will miss you,” he says. “And you will wake up.”

.

Himchan spends his last day in the Desert with Daehyun, mostly in bed, spurning sleep. They bathe together and crawl back in between the sheets when they are both dry. Daehyun feeds him fruit from his fingertips, sucking the sweet juice from his skin. The hours pass too quickly. Soon, night will fall again, and Yongguk will return.

His heart beats quickly at the thought of it. Yongguk is someone to him, outside of the Desert. But here, in his room in the heat and sand, Daehyun is everything.

“You must choose to go,” Daehyun whispers against his skin, his throat. The metal of his bracelets and anklets is cool but warms quickly. “Get out of here. Live.”

“But you,” Himchan murmurs back. “But you…”

“But I belong here.”

Lightning forks across the sky. Soon, it will storm. Himchan kisses him, wants to remember the taste of him forever.

“I won’t forget you,” Himchan promises.

Daehyun lays back and doesn’t say anything in return.

.

He’d tried not to fall asleep, but in the end he finds himself being gently coaxed awake, head pillowed on Daehyun’s chest. He groans, looks up, and sees Yongguk waiting respectfully at the foot of the bed, hands clasped.

“Are you ready?” Daehyun or Yongguk asks him. He’s not sure which one of them spoke. Daehyun eases him up to sitting, and Himchan clings to his hand, throat dry.

“Will you come with us?” he asks Daehyun, who shakes his head. Himchan’s heart flutters in his chest.

“Oh, Himchan,” Daehyun breathes. “I can’t do this with you.”

Himchan inhales quickly, and holds the precious air in his lungs. “Will it hurt?” he asks.

“No,” Yongguk says. He holds out his hand. Himchan stands, and he takes it. The band of metal around his ankle falls away, brittle and shattering on the floor.

His last image of Daehyun is of the prince sitting alone in the bed, eyes dark and heavy, shoulders slumped and narrow. The sheets are a mess. His bracelets gleam in his lap. Himchan has never seen him without them. “Goodbye,” Daehyun whispers.

Himchan cannot say goodbye. He turns back to Yongguk and follows him, his hand feeling small in Yongguk’s cool grip. The sky is low and grey and thunder rolls through the clouds. He takes him to the gardens, to the reflection pool.

Yongguk lets go of his hand and approaches the edge himself. Lightning crackles behind him, creating a dangerous silhouette, and Himchan startles when the thunder shatters the sky. Rain falls suddenly in sheets, disturbing the surface of the pool, flattening Yongguk’s hair. His clothing sticks to him and Himchan can see the lines of his body, sharp and beautiful.

“What happens now?” Himchan shouts through the downpour. With the rain falling the way it is, he can ignore the own rapid thump of his heart in his chest.

“We are on the precipice,” Yongguk says. “We choose to fall.”

He holds out his hand again. Himchan’s legs feel like roots, but he makes them move, and then he has Yongguk’s hand in his. He looks down at the surface of the pool, and though the rain should be distorting the images, he can see himself and Yongguk in it clearly. They are dressed differently. In the image, Yongguk leans forward and kisses him.

In front of him, Yongguk leans forward. Himchan gasps when he feels Yongguk’s lips on his own. It feels like he has been licked by fire. The burn is wonderful, and the rain cools him. He feels complete.

“Will you be there,” Himchan asks, Yongguk’s face in his hands. They’re both breathing hard. Yongguk’s eyes keep flickering to his lips. “Will you be there when I wake up?”

“Always,” Yongguk says.

The world tips suddenly. Himchan gasps, and water rushes into his mouth, into his nose and lungs. Yongguk is there above him, holding him down. He can see the surface of the reflection pool growing farther and farther away as he sinks.

It is so cold in these waters, like being thrown into ice. It stabs at him like needles until he is numb.

Yongguk holds him as he drowns.

.

The first thing Himchan’s consciousness processes is the strange rhythmic beeping of a machine close to his ear, and then the feeling of being swaddled in sheets and pillows. His head pounds and he’s so, so thirsty. He opens his eyes and squints through the glare, through the pounding of his head, to see a silhouette against a white background.

“He’s awake!” someone says from far away, in a voice that echoes in his skull. He groans, feels fingers in his hair that are careful and tentative and light. “Himchan?” the voice continues at a much lower volume, concern coloring it darker and lower.

“Yongguk,” Himchan croaks, closing his eyes again. His body aches, but he is awake.

“Yeah,” Yongguk sighs. “Yeah, I’m right here. I called the doctors. They’re coming, now. You’re going to be fine. Everything’s going to be fine.”

“Yongguk,” Himchan gasps again, feeling everything well up inside of him and spilling over. “How long…?”

Yongguk rubs his thumb back and forth over the back of Himchan’s hand on the bed. “Shh,” he soothes. “Shh, too long, Himchan. Too long. Everything’s going to be okay, now. I’m so happy you’re awake. I’m so happy you’re okay.”

Himchan remembers sand, a maze, a boy who tasted like milk and honey. He sees Yongguk, and Yongguk leans down to kiss his forehead, then his nose, then his lips.

“I love you,” Yongguk says against his cheek, right under his ear.

“I love you, too,” Himchan whispers, just as a storm breaks outside.

.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'll wrap up my bones  
> And leave them  
> Out of this home  
> Out on the road
> 
> Two feet standing on a principle  
> Two hands longing for each others warmth  
> Cold smoke seeping out of colder throats  
> Darkness falling, leaves nowhere to go
> 
> \-- _Still_ , Daughter
> 
> [writing](http://andnowforyaya.tumblr.com/) | [twitter](https://twitter.com/andnowforyaya)


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